


The Temptation to Exist

by scarlet_malfoy



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 00:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2447954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarlet_malfoy/pseuds/scarlet_malfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just rewatching the series, and I've decided I'm going to pick my favorite shippy moment in each episode and give my own interpretation of these dude's headspaces. Well, probably mostly Rust's, to be honest. In the first installment, Rust is musing on the dinner he's invited to, and we learn a bit more about what cumulatively drives him to drink beforehand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Temptation to Exist

Rust’s small space is clean and sparse. Nothing blaring or bright hanging that might trigger a memory best left at the back corner of his brain. No pictures of Sophia anywhere, not even today on her birthday. Pictures' eyes all tend to blink at him, moreso when he’s drunk, and so Rust’s packed them all away. 

  Just the necessities for him. Food, water, clothes in the closet. Case files and books stacked haphazard. Nothing else, usually, though today there’s a bouquet of red and white carnations set atop one of the stacks.   

He lays on his lone mattress looking across at the flowers. The white ones are static, stationary, but the other half are sharp and red, their hot tinge bleeding, swirling into the wall they’re set against, dripping down the cover of _The Temptation to Exist_ by E. M. Cioran. The red tendrils twist and spread down the stack, settling slowly into the carpet like blood. He narrows his eyes at the scene but nothing changes.   

He'd picked the flowers up on his way home to change clothes after talking to the gals at the bar. Liza had recommended bringing flowers instead of wine. “You’re going to try and make a real good first impression tonight, well then you shouldn’t have another drop, Detective.” She’d smiled sickly sweet at him, sipping at her third long island. 

  It'd seemed like a good idea at the time, but now Rust’s had more than a few beers and he’s leaning over, propped up on one elbow and reaching for the flask of whiskey he keeps beneath the mattress.   

Marty’s gonna kill him, Rust knows that. Maybe it wasn’t exactly Marty’s idea to have him over for dinner, but Rust’s felt his partner’s curiosity pecking at the edges of him lately. It’s been coming down to this for a while, and if he’s being honest with himself, which he always is, it’s been coming down to this flask of whiskey in his hand all day. He unscrews the lid and takes a long swig, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall.   

Even if it hadn’t been Sophia’s birthday, Rust would have made a mess of the social invitation. He’d only had to make conversation with Marty at the office, in the car, crime scenes. Just work stuff, so far, but Rust himself came through despite it, egged on by Marty’s questions. His partner didn’t like the answers he received, but Rust always watched Marty’s face in the quiet times he demanded in the car afterward. His words hadn’t just gone in one ear and out the other; they actually shook Marty up pretty good.  

Marty would never admit that, but Rust didn’t need him to. It was enough to know he’d been heard. More than enough. Damn, Marty went deeper than even he knew, and Rust was curious himself as to just how deep.  

No point, though. No point.   

Rust takes one more swig and screws the lid back on, dropping the flask onto the mattress beside him. He opens his eyes and finds a thin red mist has spread evenly through the air of his small space, glinting and thrumming wherever the fading sunlight hits it from between the slatted vertical blinds.   

His space is polluted by these falsehoods constantly, and even though he knows better, he still has to see this shit. He pretends to walk blindly through it all, and whenever he gives a hint as to what it's really like being Rustin Spencer Cohle, his current partner requests a reassignment. It happened twice, back in Texas.  
    
And it's fine. He's convinced that even though no one else can see the red mist or any of the other bullshit, if someone had been there, they’d be able to feel it. Rust barely hints at it to Marty, but Marty feels it anyway. More like he's drawn to it like a moth to flame, and he gets just as broiled. As good a face as Marty puts on for everybody, as good as all his intentions might be, there's something in him that is highly sensitive to the dark of the world. Marty wouldn’t be nearly as good at his job if he wasn’t. 

  It's too much to ask, really, for someone to be his partner. He’d wanted to work alone, but he knows that kind of thing just isn’t done, especially not if he's gonna go about things this time along the legal lines.   

Marty has to know where the line is between them. That Rust can’t just come over for dinner on a whim, can’t open himself up to that, can’t let Marty’s family become accustomed to him in any way. It's invisible, the bullshit, but people are always affected by all that he carries around, if not by Rust himself. He can’t do that to Marty or his family when they work so well together. His and Marty’s relationship can go as far as the cases they work on, and no further. Rust's certain, this fuck up of a night will make sure of that. 

  ~*~*~  

Marty shoves the cup of coffee at him on the porch and Rust is taken aback.   

He’d expected the anger, the harsh words. Marty had known that Rust was a bit of a live wire, but he hadn’t exactly been ready to receive the alcoholic on the front steps, wilting bouquet in hand. Marty’s two little girls peek out at him from behind their father’s back as he holds the door halfway open, and Rust sees nothing but Marty in the eldest’s blue eyes.   

Rust speaks, but he isn’t even sure what words are coming out. He hadn’t thought this outcome through at all, had expected to just go off of Marty’s anger and throw it right back, to leave Marty’s house and show up at work in the morning with all his apologies, and Marty would just think better of asking ever again.   

“Next time,” Marty says. He wants to try it again another time. He actually wants Rust to come in and make conversation with his family for a few minutes before needing to leave on a fake work call, and he wants Rust to come back and try to do this fucking dinner with his family, his wife and his girls, all over again. More than that, he actually _means_ it.   

Rust stares at him, taking a tentative sip of the hot liquid for lack of anything better to do. His head is swimming in alcohol, but the steam from the mug is the heat of the fire inside his dad’s place, after he’d been out half the evening walking alone in the Alaskan wilderness. The steam becomes corporeal arms, hands that grasp across the distance between him and Marty on the porch. They frame his partner’s face, steam hands cupping Marty’s cheeks tinged orange from the dinner table light on inside the house.   

Marty tells him to drink the rest of his coffee and come inside, and so he does.

**Author's Note:**

> The Temptation to Exist is a book by E.M. Cioran, and I found it on a list of books that fans of True Detective should read. Seems like something that would be on Rust's shelves.


End file.
